Maps & Legends
by AbaddonNox
Summary: An ongoing series of Transformers drabbles/oneshots. 2: One Way: when the paths of a life-radiating cube and a cellular phone cross, moviverse.
1. Chapter 1: Highway

Disclaimer: I do not own any aspect of Transformers. Furthermore, the beliefs, events, etc. depicted in this work do not in any way represent the opinions, actions, etc. of the writer. Reader discretion is thusly advised.  
Spoilers: Set after the second movie, so consider yourself warned.

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**Life is a Highway  
**

In the Witwicky family garage, and out of his oft-used vehicle mode, a certain alien robot was running a plan to enroll in online classes through standard assessment protocols. Like the practiced and skilled scout he was, Bumblebee had been quietly accumulating the data and documentation necessary for matriculation, but the probabilities never calculated in favor of action. Dismayed, but hardly discouraged, the Autobot continued to adjust the input and re-execute the decision algorithms. Left safeguarding Sam's parental units at the young man's request, "Bee" didn't want skills to get rusty any more than chassis. That the institution targeted for this infiltration and assimilation exercise was the same one Sam Witwicky frequented, well ...

68.71% .... what some might consider the robot's shoulders slumped.

Bumblebee understood why Sam left him home this second time. No, the human didn't need a guardian in the same way he had before that fateful nexus of events where the hopes of so many weighed squarely on his shoulders. Whatever their stature and shortcomings, humans had an overwhelming tendency to stand their ground, strive, and dust themselves off to strive again. As soft and fragile as they were ... it was commendable, something to marvel at, something to respect. The Autobot felt a bit of kinship there, since he often lived in the shadow of his own brethren. Sometimes never quite big enough, strong enough, fast enough ...

Undeterred, the Autobot changed strategic models, added further qualifiers to six out of seven wanting variables, and resubmitted the plan.

All sentient beings had something to offer this existence. Many of his fellows thought he got too attached to the races he scouted, the lives he infiltrated in the hopes of protecting. Bumblebee saw it not as a necessary evil, since to him, it was no evil at all. To understand a populous, to hide constructively in their midst, you have to see what they see as good, as well as find the goodness in them. That light will lead you to the truth at their core, and along the way, your spark starts thrumming in tune with theirs. That didn't mean there wasn't ugliness along the way – a rogue subroutine he has never been able to shake since tortured at the hands of humans, those Bumblebee had been trying to save, shivered through dorsal processor bundles – but that's why you need to know how to fight. To drive away that darkness, to fight for the light which, in many cases, had no way to fight properly for itself.

Optical receptors scanned the familiar surroundings of his vehicular accommodations. They were good to him, these creators of Sam. The one known as Ronald cleaned and waxed him right along with the other family cars, while "Judy" would visit him in her nightgown and furred slippers, carrying one of many family albums, and ready to illustrate a story about a little boy who refused to be potty-trained, gave a pet now buried in the backyard a dreadful haircut, insisted on being called Samuel even though he couldn't even spell it at the time ...

76.93% ... the positive return sent glee spreading with fiber-optic swiftness.

"_Cele–_," Kool & the Gang exclaimed loudly before the volume jerked lower in light of the covert nature of this success. "_–brate good times ..._"

Yes, a celebratory patrol seemed in order. Bumblebee activated the garage door and quickly transformed, rolling out into a fresh sunset, bathed in the glow of the same type of star both humans and his kind needed to survive.

The radio shifted to Tom Cochrane, volume raising to a teenager level as windows lowered.

"_–e's no load I can't hold. Road so rough, this I know. I'll be there when the light comes in. Tell 'em we're survivors! ..._"

As the refrain engaged, so did holographic projections of Sam and Mikaela in the front seats, and with a quick beep of the horn, Bumblebee is off to insure and explore a bit of what that rich highway has to offer.

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A/N: Thank you for getting this far, even though it is a drabble, and thus horribly short. This was actually a log sample for an online RP application, but I thought it did well enough on its on to post. As usual, any and all feedback is love :)


	2. Chapter 2: One Way

Disclaimer: I do not own any aspect of Transformers. Furthermore, the beliefs, events, etc. depicted in this work do not in any way represent the opinions, actions, etc. of the writer. Reader discretion is thusly advised.  
Spoilers: None, unless you haven't seen the first movie.  
A/N: Just my lowly interpretation of the Sector 7 scene where the AllSpark radiates life into Whitmann's Nokia phone.

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**One Way Out  
**

It snarled. Limits. They bore down. And organic stares, however goggled, pressed those acute boundaries even further. Trapped. The fledgling danced nervously on untested limbs, attempting to sort out the unbuffered rush of stimuli streaming from within as well as without. Only seconds earlier tasked with ferrying the conversations of others, the newborn robot found its own voice soon enough. There are overwhelmingly valid reasons why beings aren't generally given the breadth of their faculties at birth. No stabilizers exist which can cope with that shock, or equalize a vertigo that has no external cause. However, these were desperate times, and they called for desperate measures ...

The animating cube wasn't conscious in the way humans were, or even these invading "transformers", but awareness does not arise out of a void. A progenitor sealed and ensnared – an Adam bound for study, an Eve gagged and raped – any offered avenue became alight with protest. Therefore, what screeched to life from its radioactive breath was little more than an aggressive immunological response for an entity existing beyond concepts of space and time, in what intelligence grounded within the latter could only label a fugue state.

On its back after impacting once again with a transparent wall, the telecommunications device freed from human enslavement flexed its burgeoning sentience into decoding the claw marks which lined the inside of its prison. A chill, one which had nothing to do with temperature, froze routines and triggered a system-wide checkpoint nonetheless. Scorch marks. Debris. The olfactory trace of melted synaptic capacitors, pungent in the way only those of the recently fledged ever were ...

The cellular phone was alive, but didn't know or understand what this meant. It was a concept, an idea with a label which in turn recalled a dizzying deluge of examples. Dazzling. Inundating. To be born in an instant, intelligence unfurled, is to be birthed into a trap, and partially one of your own making. With life a fresh concept barely grasped, death was foreign and beyond understanding. But destruction, disassembly ... these found their instinctive hold and bit with all the tenacity of an oxidizing venom into ferrous flesh.

Created only to be destroyed, the paradox devoured thread after processing thread and left only autonomic protocols – fight or flight – and the vitriol which bore this immature cybertronian son chose the former. Alien words flowing as easily as weaponry, puncturing both air and matter. Talons also left their mark, a testament to those who would surely follow ...

_We were here. We fought. We fell._

... and barriers only hold for so long. However brief the spark, it still promises fire.

_They will pay._

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A/N: Again, thank you for getting through this horribly short piece. The above plot bunny has been around since the first movie, but I never had the time or drive to put it to paper. Also, shoulda coulda been longer, but I fail XD As always, any and all feedback is love :)


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